Rethinking Childhood Anxiety

Anxiety, like most feelings, exists to send us valuable messages. It is a call to action, motivating us to stay away from dark alleys and prepare for presentations. As humans, we possess a unique ability to predict threats before they are imminent, using our imaginations to keep ourselves safe in the real world. This ability comes with a downside… we open ourselves up to real anxiety in response to imaginary threats. 

In children, anxious feelings have an added interpersonal component whereby a bonded child and caregiver are especially attuned to each others’ fear (anxiety) responses. Evolutionary in nature, this phenomenon exists to help us protect our children from harm. It helps children learn to differentiate between real and imaginary threats and supports a quick return to emotional and physiological homeostasis following stressful events. Long story short... children are hard-wired to turn to caregivers for comfort and safety when anxious feelings arise.

Anxious feelings can become an anxiety problem or disorder when an individual (adult or child) remains in a heightened state of anxiety despite the absence of a real threat, and those feelings begin to impact the individual’s ability to function productively. In thinking back to the unique interpersonal nature of anxiety in children (dependent on caregivers for safety and comfort), most parents of a highly anxious child report that their child’s anxiety has had a profound impact on family life.

Traditional treatments for anxiety problems in both adults and children involve a combination of challenging anxiety-provoking thoughts, building strategies to help sufferers tolerate anxious feelings, and gradual exposure to anxiety-provoking stimuli. These treatments are extensively studied and have shown to be effective when the individual is highly participatory in the treatment. For parents of highly anxious children, a potential drawback of these treatments is the expectation that the child will fully engage, participating willingly in strategies and techniques provided by a practitioner. Parents then end up in a position of placing additional demands on their children, leading often to frustration and defeat.

SPACE, or Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions, is an exciting new evidence-based treatment for Anxiety and OCD in children. Developed by Eli Lebowitz of the Yale Child Study Center, SPACE can be used on its own (for children who are resistant to treatment) or in conjunction with more traditional interventions. 

Unlike traditional treatments, SPACE interventions place no demands whatsoever on the child (the child does not even have to attend therapy sessions), and instead focus on what PARENTS can do (or stop doing) to help reduce their child’s anxiety. This approach can relieve the parent of the overwhelming burden of trying to control their child's behavior.

SPACE helps parents practice two types of behaviors - increasing support through conveying acceptance and confidence and decreasing accommodation, referring to any action that a parent takes (or deliberately doesn’t take) because of their child’s anxiety. By mastering these two techniques, parents can break the cycle of anxiety by helping their child cope with discomfort and learn to self-regulate independently.

If you want to help your child become more independent, more social, or more confident, shifting their mindset from “I can’t do it because it’s hard” to “I can do it EVEN THOUGH it’s hard”, SPACE might be the answer.

There is nothing more important to me than a world full of children who believe they can do it EVEN THOUGH IT’S HARD.  If you would like to learn more about SPACE Treatment, or other treatments for childhood anxiety, please reach out.